"Good" Jobs vs. Happy Jobs

Why You Need To Rethink Your Career Aspirations

This spring, millions of 20-somethings have suddenly found themselves in a staring competition with the real world. For the college seniors of the Tiger Mom generation, this usually means a search for “prestigious jobs,” or jobs that can provide instant validation of their hard work. But there’s more to the real world than rankings and superficial expectations. It is useful for us to understand some of the factors that we use to gauge the “prestige” of professions, in order to truly identify jobs that will make us happy after college.

1. IndustrySome industries are stereotyped more favorably than others. At a school like mine, where successful parents send their children to befriend other smart young adults in order to cultivate a life of achievement, this is even more prevalent. Certain jobs, such as banking or consulting, or a gig with Teach for America or the Peace Corps, have been placed on a pedestal over the decades. But your success in life (in the pursuit of happiness or professional prowess alike) is no more guaranteed by a job with a Fortune 10 company, as it was by your admission into an Ivy League school. There’s more to a meaningful career than the name of your first employer.

2. PayIt is certainly nice to be paid for our hard work for once, instead of paying tuition (or taking on insurmountable student loans) in order to work hard at school. Pay dictates prestige like none other. This is why our society revolves around worshipping the elite: the elite have money! But it is prudent to ask yourself how much money you really need to feel fulfilled. According to numerous claims (including this one from Gallup), the magic number tends to hover around $75,000. Maybe this isn’t right for you, but everyone has a range, and you should honestly assess yours.

I should add, though, that there is no shame in admitting that you want to get wealthy. In that case, your pursuit of that Big 4 accounting firm should include a conscious understanding of whether it will truly help you attain a level of wealth that will satisfy you.

3. Exit OpportunitiesFor young professionals, the purpose of a job is often to set them up to reach a desired target, often resulting in opportunities after their tenure with the first employer. Some jobs have more exit opportunities, or at least more evident ones, and these tend to be perceived as “better” than others. Many companies make this abundantly clear, for example, with web pages like McKinsey & Company’s “Where we can take you.”

Taking a job just because of the things you could possibly do as soon as you leave it is a fairly cynical approach to the next few years of your life. Is it really worth it to slave away at a job for which you feel no passion, only because it could maybe place you at a grad school that you realistically don’t know whether you’d like to attend?

4. LocationWhere you work is primarily driven by what your career entails. Politician types tend to end up in Washington, DC, while fashion types would rather fancy New York. However, the location of your work can affect people’s perception of the value of your job. The concept here is the same as branding. Certain brands of clothing are considered higher-end than others, even if they’re not objectively any different in quality. Similarly, cities have a “wow” factor, in that if they’re recognized as a popular location.

My fellow Stanford graduates probably find Silicon Valley attractive partly because, around here, it has been branded as the be-all and end-all of human knowledge and progress. Location is important insofar as it informs your social life, and proximity to certain places and people (downtown or mountains, family or tech scene, etc.). It’s not good enough to pick a place to call home simply because the masses think it’s “sexy.”

5. Rat RaceRadiohead, Jean-Paul Sartre, and your average man facing a midlife crisis have one thing in common: a skeptical approach to the things we desire in life. I don’t mean to sound anti-establishment, but it is true that high demand for a particular kind of job makes it seem better. If a certain job has a lot of applicants, due to some combination of the factors above, or other factors, it will appear to be more prestigious. In our super high-strung society, the rat race begins way too early, so obviously when faced with choices in the job market, we have a gut reaction to go where everyone else does, too.

You don’t necessarily have to reject popular jobs, but it is healthy to figure out your primary influence when hunting for jobs.

Redefining “Happy” JobsAs an incoming management consultant at a large firm, I will be the last to preach to you that jobs that have traditionally been perceived as “good” under the criteria above are necessarily ones that will make you miserable. On the other hand, a “happy” job doesn’t have to ask you to drop your pursuit of wealth or power.

Being able to truly discover my motivations kept me sane during my job hunt. I learned to place importance on finding the right “fit” for me. And why wouldn’t I? After all, every employer out there is doing exactly that.

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